Travel Nursing Break Down & our Why

Along our travels we often get asked where we are from and what brings us to the area.  Through these travels and questions, we have found many people who have never heard of travel nursing or know very little about it. 
Here's a little info about what Travel Nursing actually entails and how we navigate it with a family. 


Reasons Travel Nurses are needed:
Most hospitals go through times where they are more busy than normal, they wouldn't be able to staff for these busy times all year around, so they use a travel nurse.  Or hospitals could have an influx of nurses who are out on maternity leave or possibly aren't able to get the staff they need locally - these are some of the reasons that there is such a need for travelers. 


Travel Nurse Companies and Contracts
There are many travel nurse companies out there, these companies are essentially the "middle man" between hospitals and nurses.  They arrange the assignments and get the rates and so on. The nurse is technically an employee of the travel nurse company and not the hospital. 
Contracts are typically 13 weeks long. Although, a lot of times you are able to extend if the hospital still has the need. (& if you're good at your job and the unit likes you.)  We have extended eleven times in our 5 years of traveling. 


Housing
Typically, the travel nurse company will have a place that they house their nurses - extended stay hotels, rental houses, air BnB types, etc.  
However, there is an option to get a stipend and the nurse finds their own housing.  This is the option that we have always taken - since we are a family traveling along with the nurse and also have more than two pets. 

Our Why...

You may be wondering why we, personally, wanted to take our young family and travel the country, away from everything familiar. 

Short Answer: money

Travel nurses can make more money, especially for a nurse 1 year out of nursing school.  We had been living in my parents basement while Bryan was in school and found that even if we had wanted to stay put in our hometown, it was going to be a major struggle for us to move out, into a good part of town on one income.  Almost impossible. We took a major step of faith and moved 1,100 miles away from our hometown on our first assignment. 

Long Answer:  We wanted to explore!  We wanted to see different things, to give our kids an adventurous spirit.  To not follow the straight and narrow, but to take the road less traveled.  

For me personally (Bethany), it was a big step to move so far away from everything that was so familiar.  I struggle with anxiety and the uncertainty of travel nursing was huge!  
We wanted to give our kids the opportunity to experience different parts of the country and see things that both of us had only read about in books or seen on tv (Grand Canyon, Hollywood CA, Great Salt Lake, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and so many more!).

I think Bryan had always had travel nursing in the back of his mind as something he had wanted to do.  He would talk about it and communicate with different travel nurse agencies and I would say, "How fun!  That would be great."  But never really thought that we would follow through with it.  I'm so glad he led our family with his adventurous spirit and brought mine to the surface, so that we could partake on this journey. 


Travel Nursing is definitely not a lifestyle that I think everyone could do or should do.  It's full of uncertainty.  As much as we have loved theses past five years, there have been many times where it was super stressful, with lots of unknowns.  As the years and assignments have passed by we have learned and been able to handle the stress better.  
God has been the major helper in our learning process and how thankful we are for Him!  Our faith has been a constant in each move, each assignment, each 1000+ mile drive!  Without God's guidance and our faith in Him, we would not have been able to continue (without many, many panic attacks).


But if this travel nurse lifestyle is your cup of tea - Let me encourage you - it is a great adventure! It is doable (even with a family and zoo!) and not just doable, but you can thrive! 


Have questions or want to be connected with a great recruiter?  Comment below! 


-Bethany

Our Tiny House Journey [part three]

Our Tiny House

Reveal

The first time we saw our tiny home, in person, there were no words!  It was HUGE, but tiny all at the same time!  As tall as a tractor trailer it felt gigantic! And the inside - well it felt surprisingly spacious too! 

Our cats making themselves right at home! 

First photo taken in the home!

Our builders had professional photos taken before we moved in ... here are a few of our favorites. 

Customized catio! 

Small door on the back is
access to the storage area.

Our tiny home is a 30ft long, 8.6ft wide, 13.6ft high - 416sq ft with lofts (around 250 without the lofts) custom build.  We had a hand in designing every piece of it and love how it turned out! 

Our home includes:

* 2 lofts (12' loft and 8' loft) 

* 1 main floor bedroom nook 

* Bathroom with full size shower and "normal" toilet 

* Living room with a convertible twin size bed/couch with tons of storage underneath and over head storage as well

* Kitchen with full size appliances (counter depth fridge, gas stove, & electric oven), farm house style sink, and small counter bar

* Our entry way/stairs is custom/hand built with tons of storage that also houses our washer/dryer combo

* Custom catio with 2 access points 

* Custom unfinished storage with outside access

This is one of my favorite photos from our few days in Vancouver - a group photo of us with some of our builders! 

And there we have the journey of our going Tiny! 

Feel free to ask questions about our home and lifestyle; we plan to do future in-depth posts about what we might design differently, pros and cons of living tiny and other fun tiny home things. 

Check out our Instagram page (@Tiny.wanderers) for more photos inside the tiny, as well as before/after photos from when we moved in. 

And if you are interested in purchasing a home, just like ours, you can find all the info about it (including pricing) here: Grizzly by Backcountry Tiny Homes

-Bethany 

Our Tiny House Journey [part two]

The Building Process

Building began in May 2018 and our amazing builders (Backcountry Tiny Homes) updated us with daily photos.  We would be on pins and needles each evening waiting for the updates! 

Through our entire build, we were on assignment in Las Vegas. Nearly 1,000 miles away from BTH in Vancouver, WA.  So each update was the absolute highlight of our days. 

Updates started with the delivery of our trailer... 

The very 1st walls going up! 

Lofts being framed

Fully framed! 

Electrical and water lines

All 15 windows installed 

Siding going on! 

The start of our tongue and groove walls
and beetle kill accent walls

Starting to look like a home <3

Dry fitting of our custom stairs and storage

Almost done! 

By the beginning of August, our home was nearly complete and we were about to begin our 1,000 mile journey to pick up our home!  It was like Christmas Eve for all of us (except the pets - they weren't so excited) - we could.not.wait to get to Vancouver and see our home! 

For the most part, our build was smooth sailing.  We had a couple of small bumps during the build, but nothing major and nothing that our builders weren't on top of and ready to make right as soon as possible.  We are so thankful for our wonderful experience with BTH. (& highly recommend them! If you couldn't guess.)


If you want to see more photos from the build process, check us out on Instagram - we did weekly updates!  @tiny.wanderers



Next post we'll reveal the final product (don't cheat and look on instagram!) :)

-Bethany 

Our Tiny House Journey [part one]

Our Tiny House

Starting the Process

We had been traveling for just over three years with Bryan's job when we started looking into tiny homes and if going tiny might be an option for us.  

We were tired of looking for rentals with short term leases, tired of paying deposits and being worried that Bryan wouldn't be able to extend his contract (therefore having to cancel a rental agreement), tired of dealing with crappy management and tired of the two animal only (which we always broke) policies. We wanted something of our own! 

We were living in the Salt Lake City area at the time; I can remember riding in the car with Bryan and the kids - we were fussing and complaining about our current rental woes (we had renewed for another assignment and the monthly rent had gone up $300 a month!!) and tiny house living seemed like a great option!  

Of course, Bryan had mentioned RV living years ago when we started traveling and I shut that down hardcore.  How on earth could we all live in an RV? Five people and multiple animals? Insane! 

Somehow, 3 years later and 4 rentals later - the idea seemed less crazy. Sorry, Bryan! 

When we got home we started looking up tiny homes on yahoo, instagram, facebook, pinterest, everywhere; gathering all the info that we could.  We started taking screenshots and pinning houses, styles, and ideas that we liked. We binged every show on tiny houses we could find (Tiny House Nation, Tiny Luxury, Tiny House Finders). 

Together, we came up with a rough draft of what we thought we would need/want in a tiny home (thank you graph paper!!) and then the search for a builder began. 

We located a builder 30mins from where we were living at the time and set up an appointment to go tour their current builds.  

It was Halloween day 2017 - we were able to stand in a tiny that just had the rough walls up and envision what it would be like to live in a tiny house.  We had decided this is what we wanted to do!  We were so excited to start this journey and to get the process moving! 

Unfortunately, this particular tiny house company was not as excited to work with us as we were to work with them.  We spent the next 5 weeks trying to get them to communicate with us and get the process started.  With failed promise after failed promise and many emails and phone calls, we decided this was not what we wanted out of a builder.  Someone who had no communication skills and didn't seem like they wanted to work with us. Adios! 

Even though we were discouraged by this and really angry - we can look back and say that this was such a blessing! God had better plans and a better builder in store for us! 

We found our builders on facebook, through one of the many tiny house groups we had joined. I can't remember the exact question/post I was commenting on, but this very informative lady, Tina, responded and gave me a lot of information and even offered to email me more info.  She mentioned that she owned a Tiny House building company and would be happy to answer any questions we might have.  

A couple days later we were on a conference call with Tina discussing our build and deciding that she and her husband's (Luke) company would be the ones to build our home! 

Backcountry Tiny Homes in Vancouver, WA would be building our 30ft long, 8.5ft wide, 13.5ft high home! 

Within the first 3 weeks of talking with Tina we had our whole home spec'd out! (a million times better than the local builder!) BTH (backcountry tiny homes) was amazing at communication and extremely professional! We couldn't be happier! 

Once we had the plans all worked out (photos above), we got in line to get our home built!  We were able to plan it so that we could pick up the home between assignments in August of 2018! 

From our first conversation with Tina to picking up our fully built and road ready tiny was 8 months!  

It was a long process, but so well worth it!  And we were able to make some life long friends with our builders along the way. Priceless.

Being able to design our home (with the help of BTH) and then watch the process of it being built (even though we were nearly 1000 miles away) was amazing and so much fun! In big part thanks to Tina and Luke at Backcountry Tiny Homes! 

Our biggest advice for anyone thinking of going tiny or in the early process of finding someone to build them a tiny is to select your builders with the upmost care!

Your builders can make or break your build!  We were so blessed and lucky to be steered away from a company that had little to no communication skills (and later found out that their builds were not top notch either)!  If you are going to be living far away from your build then communication is going to be a TOP priority!  

Other than communication, things to consider when choosing a builder:

1. Ask for references.  Builders who are proud of their work will be happy to give you contact info from previous clients.  If they aren't willing to do this, then you may want to consider a different builder. 

Yelp and facebook reviews are also very helpful - people are far more likely to write bad reviews than good ones, so you may find some helpful info there as well. 

2. Location - before we started our process, I would have said that location was a big deal and would want to pick someone close to where we physically lived.  But after our experience with BTH, I would say picking the right builder (with all the skills, communication and experience that you want) is far more important than their location.  Many tiny home builders deliver their builds (for an extra price) all over the country and some to Canada as well (including BTH).  So location would not be one of my top concerns (as long as they have good communication). 

3. Pricing - are they in your budget, are they charging a good/solid amount and not inflating the price?  You also may want to see if they offer financing (if needed), as many do not. 

4. Before you contact a builder, do your research.  Search the internet, watch the tiny house shows, join tiny house groups on facebook (and ask tons of questions!).  Find out what you like and don't like, make lists of things you want and don't want in your home.  This will make your search for a builder easier and also help the design process move quicker. 

Next up!  

We'll talk about the build process and brag on our builders a bit more :) 

-Bethany

Introduction to our crazy brood!

Our Crazy Brood

Hello and welcome to our crazy travel nurse, tiny house living life! 

I'm Bethany the mom/wife/teacher/chaos wrangler!  My husband, Bryan, is the travel nurse/provider/protector of our brood.  We have three kiddos - a daughter "F" who is eleven and two sons, "K" who is 9 and "G" who is 7. 

We are a close knit family, we spend every minute together and love exploring this beautiful country.  We are blessed beyond measure to be able to live this unique life and thank God for giving us these opportunities.  

Really, we're just like every other family (kids bicker constantly, we can never decide where to eat [unless Chick-Fil-A is an option], there is always a mess SOMEWHERE, & we love each other fiercely!) our home just has wheels and the work environment changes frequently! 

How our nomadic journey started...

Bryan graduated from nursing school in 2013 and almost immediately started working in our local hospital as a NICU nurse.  The following year in August he took his first assignment as a NICU travel nurse and we have been traveling ever since! We are currently on our 20th assignment (including extensions) - we've lived in 6 states and 8 cities over the past 63 months! (wow!)

During the past 5 years, we have been able to see parts of the country that we never thought we would be able to see or experience.  From the beautiful seashore of Padre Island in Southern Texas, to the Grande Canyon in Arizona, to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the worlds first National Park, Yellowstone, and so many others!  Travel Nurse living has been, and continues to be, an experience of a lifetime! 

After traveling for about 3 years, we decided we wanted to change things up a bit and stop wasting money on uhauls and rental deposits.  We fully embraced our nomadic lifestyle and started the process of going Tiny! 

In August of 2018 we picked up our 30ft long (8ft wide, 13.5ft tall) tiny home in Washington state! 

We have been living tiny ever since and love it! One of the best decisions we have made is to go tiny.  Bryan and I both don't think we'll ever want to live in a "Big" house again - I'm sure the future will bring a stationary home, but not massive for sure.  We like the compact, organized, every nook and cranny is useful space aspect of the tiny. And it has also taught us A LOT on how to not value your life by things or possessions, but to value God above all and the experiences and time you get to spend with the ones you love most. You only get to live once, you might as well enjoy it and see as much of it as you can! 

And there you have it - a (vague) overview of our last 5 years!  More detailed posts of some of our favorite moments and adventures, plus some (hopefully) helpful posts on travel nurse and tiny house living coming soon. 

** We can't promise that we will keep up a great routine of posting or be the best of writers - but we will do what we can.  If you have any questions about our lifestyles or topics you'd like to see written about leave a comment!  And thanks for reading :) 

(Top photo taken at Yellowstone National Park in April 2019)